Matt Lauer mercilessly grills Hillary Clinton on her use of a private email server

Matt Lauer grilled Hillary Clinton on Wednesday evening over her
handling of classified information and use of a private email
server while she was secretary of state.

Lauer's second question at NBC's Commander-In-Chief Forum
was about the email scandal, and he pressed the Democratic
presidential nominee as she tried to explain how she handled
classified information.

"The word judgment has been used a lot around you, Secretary
Clinton, over the last year and a half, and in particular
concerning your use of your personal email and server to
communicate while you were secretary of state," Lauer said.

He then asked: "Why wasn't it disqualifying, if you want to be
commander in chief?"

Clinton repeated past statements about her use of a private
server being a mistake.

"As I have said repeatedly, it was a mistake to have a personal
account," Clinton said. "I would certainly not do it again. I
make no excuses for it. It was something that should not have
been done."

She pivoted to defending her assertion that she never mishandled
classified information, contrary to FBI Director James Comey's
statement saying she was "extremely careless" in handling
classified information.

"The real question is the handling of classified material, which
is I think what the implication of what your question was,"
Clinton said. "[I] have a lot of experience dealing with
classified material. ... Classified material has a header, which
has top secret, secret, confidential. Nothing, and I will repeat
this and this is verified in the report by the Department of
Justice, none of the emails sent or received by me had such a
header."

Lauer pressed on, asking, "Were some of the emails sent or
received by you referring to our drone program, our covert drone
program?"

"Yes," Clinton responded.

"Of course there were no discussions of any of the covert actions
in process being determined about whether or not to go forward,"
Clinton said. "But every part of our government had to deal with
questions, and our secretary of state's office was first and
foremost, so there are ways of talking about the drone program in
—"

Lauer cut in.

"And you said you thought your communications on that were fairly
routine," he said.

Clinton responded, "Well, let me just say, the FBI just released
their report about their investigation. They discussed drone
matters in the unclassified section of the report."

Lauer pointed out that Comey also said, "there is evidence to
support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary
Clinton's position should have known that an unclassified system
is no place for that conversation."

Clinton noted that experienced foreign-policy experts and defense
officials were communicating on an unclassified system.

Lauer pivoted to the question of whether hostile actors could
have accessed Clinton's emails that were stored on her private
server.

"Matt, there is no evidence, of course anything is possible, but
what is factual is the State Department's system was hacked,"
Clinton said. "Most of the government systems are way behind the
curve. We've had hacking repeatedly, even in the White House.
There is no evidence my system was hacked."